1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to the field of managing directory listing caption sets, and in particular, to navigation, storage and retrieval filtering of telephone listing caption sets in a relational database.
2. Description of Related Art
Telephone directory listings may contain several "caption sets" per listing. "Caption sets" are also referred to as "indents". Each caption set may contain several children and further children of children in a hierarchal manner. A large listing such as a university, a department store or a hospital, for example, may contain several hundred indents nested at several different levels. Although a relational database, such as DB2, has bill-of-material queries for "parts-of-parts" queries, it is too slow for typical directory assistance queries, does not provide for advanced matching rules or filters needed for caption sets, and does not provide for built-in navigation of the hierarchy without executing subsequent time consuming searches. Although a department store listing may have both a "men's" department and a "shoe" department, the query may need to match against a caption set indent that is a "men's shoe" department, determine it's parent and children indents if any, and correctly display the appropriate caption set indents in the appropriate order and indentation levels in a fast and efficient manner. The problem is further compounded when listing data needs to be joined from several tables because of one-to-many and many-to-many relationships, which are typical situations. Telephone directory listings are constantly updated on both a listing and an indent level and the indexing schemes and data design schemes must accommodate these changes.